New Patch Feedback

I'd rather not, as it will derail this thread even further and will only lead us to a point where we will have to agree to disagree, which, in all fairness, I'd like to do now and instead lament the fact that there are archetype bars so that people would use that to define their characters.

Carry on.

 

I must say I really like the new skills in the Berserker tree. The tree as a whole feels very complete, offering an excellent combination of offense/defense and passive/active/proc skills, and therefore complements every melee build greatly. Good job.

That being said, I don't like the current subskill progression as much, which is as follows:

1. Poor Impulse Control (25% chance of +1 +1 +1 +1 for 7 turns - on hit)
2. Ancestral Body Paint ( +1 +1 +1 +1 +10 +5 permanent)
3. Killing Blow ( +5 +100 on next hit)
4. Viking Temperament (25% chance of +1 +1 +1 +2 for 7 turns - when hit)
5. Berserker Rage (25% chance of +2 +2 +2 +2 for 7 turns - on/when hit)

Now, while Ancestral Body Paint is really cool, you can get it before enemies have started to deal the kind of damage it protects you against, making it redundant early on. Killing Blow, on the other hand, is the exact opposite - it scales better than the other four skills and thus retains is usefulness throughout the game, which is sort of what you'd expect from a top tier skill. Up next is Viking Temperament, a skill that only works when taking damage, which is ironic because you were just given a skill that lets you avoid taking damage by occasionally one-shotting your enemy. Lastly, Berserker Rage procs on both offense and defense, making it a well-rounded addition to the tree, albeit one that doesn't scale very well later in the game.

The problem with the skill progression above is that you're given two offensive skills early on, which makes the later defensive skills less useful because they'll trigger less often. This is especially true for dual-wielding builds, since they'll rely on their increased damage to kill things before they're hit. For those builds, I'm guessing 3/5 Berserker will be some sort of breakpoint because they don't have much of a reason to go past that, and the longer they wait with investing in the 4th and 5th skill - probably after maxing out their weapon skill - the less useful those two skills will be.

With that in mind, perhaps a better skill progression would be:

1. Poor Impulse Control (25% chance of +1 +1 +1 +1 for 7 turns - on hit)
2. Viking Temperament (25% chance of +1 +1 +1 +2 for 7 turns - when hit)
3. Ancestral Body Paint ( +1 +1 +1 +1 +10 +5 permanent)
4. Berserker Rage (25% chance of +2 +2 +2 +2 for 7 turns - on/when hit)
5. Killing Blow ( +5 +100 on next hit)

This way you'd get two good offensive/defensive procs early, when you're more likely to take hits and when the procs' stat boni actually matter, regardless of which weapon setup you're using. In return you'd unlock resistances and magic a bit later, but as we established earlier that's not really a problem because they're currently unlocked too early anyway. After that, you'd get an even more powerful proc which will benefit you more than previously for reasons already explained. Finally, you get an on-demand crit attack, which you'll keep using with great effect for the remainder of the game.

I feel this progression would make more sense because it would shift the tree's early focus away from avoiding damage by killing, and onto taking hits but resisting the damage. Seeing how you need to be hit in order to truly benefit from it, I think it's for the better.

 

Sorry to dreg this up but I just thought of something: Maybe enemy spellcasters (except Dredmor and maybe 1 other monster type if that seems fun) can have a visual clue they are preparing a spell, like glowing hands or something? I am sure it would be a lot of work (sorry Moomanibe ), but that way you can predict the next turn and still have complete randomness. Sounds to me like a good combination.

Just to make sure: this animation would only show they are casting a spell next turn (if they then still live)

 

Basically, you confuse your enemies with a crapload of seagulls.

 

From now on, all skill related answers should include an Indiana Jones embedded video. Even (especially) the skills that make absolutely no reference to Indiana Jones.

 

In contrast to many other people, I was very shocked to see that crafting no longer allowed you to craft recipes that you did not find in the game.

I likened the hidden recipe system similarly to the learning curve that roguelikes tend to have. It's one of the ways that, with experience, you know you'll do better at the next game. Just a few minutes ago, I came across a bunch of softballs. I remembered in my last game that bolas could be made from them. I was one level away from getting lockdown from the burglary tree, but I didn't want to use a level on that since I could just have a stack of bolas ready. I immediately went to the new crafting section, ready to create some bolas when I suddenly realized that I could no longer make them.

This shocked me very much, a lot of my favorite crafts in the game were hidden recipes, like the Golden Axe, Clockwork Power Limb, Embossed Serpentine Platemail and other recipes.

It's not like we can make them from level 1 if we happen to find the right ingredients too. They already have crafting level requirements after all.

 

Yes, but the entire game suffers from a conceit: you can get any 1 capstone craft skill by CL5. In fact, you can get any 1 capstone skill at all by CL8.

That's OK when capstone skills scale (like magic does), but not OK when they don't, because you either have to set up your capstone skill so that it's overpowered when you get it on DL2 or underpowered when you use it on DL10.

 

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but there's something weird with all of the DLC achievements, I can't get any of them to activate.

 

Where being unable to craft without the recipe falls down is in the more unusual items for a skill. For example, The Mana Torus in Smithing. No pure spellcaster will ever take Smithing again because the odds of getting a single specific recipe are so low, whereas the type of warrior that takes Smithing probably won't want The Mana Torus even if they do get the recipe.

The solution then would either be to restore hidden recipe crafting, to give recipes on level-up or apply some other means of increasing their acquisition (perhaps make sure that every shelf grants a recipe the character does not yet have) or to rebalance the skills to make them more predictable by making sure only alchemy has magic-related items and so forth (which seems practical but dull).

 

I recently fought my way to floor 15 and killed dredmor about 30 minutes ago.
Here are some thoughts on the flooer levels and their difficulty.

I was running a Sword, Dualwield, Master of Arm, Smith, Tinkerer, Burglary, Pirate - lets call it the "I need to kill you before you hit me" melee build on Going Rogue.

The first 10 floors weren't such "hard" just some were a lot harder as they used to be in normal DoD.

(TL;DR version down below)

Diggle Plauge is seriously broken, for the player but also for enemies. Floor 6 is a prime example because there are magic potatoes who can cast Diggle Plague on you. Fighting the Monster Zoo on Floor 6 ist insanly hard due to the massiv damage during the buff and even after the buff wears of for several turns (propably a bug).

As a melee build i had a very hard start until i got enough weapons and was able to fill up every equipment slot i had, afterwards is was ok, not to easy but not too hard. But the deeper i went the harder and harder it got. As a pirate i got the awesome swashbuckling skill which was insanly helpful in earlier levels but got more and more rubbish in deeper ones (i will tell you later why).

I love the new rooms especially the Dwarfen express post with its 3 evil chests (without them i would never finished this build) and the 3-rune vendor room.

The deeper i went the more troubling the enemies became until i entered floor 11 after this floor the normal rules were invalid. Floor 12 and 13 for example were a total breeze (even before i got a gods blessing) due to me specializing in armour and as much absorb es possible i was able to not get damaged exepct for criticals, and due to the evil chests weapons i could kill a muscle diggle in 2 non-critical hits.

Now killing a muscle diggle in 2 non-critical hits sounds good .... but its only the surface. the weapons i had were insanly superpowered versions of the best mudane mace (royal beatdown) from evil chests, and i was dual wielding them. Each of them had a wooping 42+ damage spread over about 4-5 damagetypes + my big direct damage bonus from melee power.

On the same note, the deeper you go the less item variations are present. I found the same item over and over and over again. Evil Chests being a prime example. I opend like 50 chests about half of them containing superweapons, but these "superweapons" only consisted out of staffs and maces, the "deeper" evil chests only spawned them because there are no swords or axes which can compare to their counterpart of staffs or maces in power.

So i a dualwielding sword melee build ended up dualwielding 2 maces making the nice swordksill bonuses useless. Now some would say "than go and use swords" but this is impossible. I NEEDED the damage output of those insane evil chest weapons or i would be crushed into millions of pieces due to me being a damage melee type combined with a bit of direct tank ( i only had low multi-magic resistances).

Another problem i noticed is that the enemies got more and more giant critical chances the deeper you go. There was a time almost every 2nd hit on me was a critical. And Criticals have a bad ability to break swashbuckling, dodge and normal counter. yes criticals just teared me apart and the amount of criticals wasn't even remotly funny (oh and because i was wielding 2 maces i almost didn't have any Enemy Dodge reduction which made it even more worse). combined with the fact that some enemies do ridiculous amounts of damage (yes i look at you Pectinous Tesseract Cube) it became very hard to survive.

Oh and before you come and tell em "plan ahead" or "go use ranged weapons lol trololo" or "use a magebuild lololol" (rally .. even melee build should have a chance to win) i used them! I used about 10x more bolts in floors 11-15 than in floor 1-10 combined, granades yes .. but they get more and more useless due to their fixed damage, bolt of squids? i praised every bolt i found or was able to buy in floors below 12 a thousand times ... they saved my life more than once. Wands? fixed damage makes them useless deeper and some of their special procs don't trigger due to the enemy having very high amounts of magical resistance.

Krong anvils became more and more useless the deeper i went due to their minimal blessings ... yeha a krong on floor 14 and i got +2 dodge ... thats nothing.

"normal" artefacts found in uberchests, from the lutefishgod or from sidequests are rubbish in comparison to evil chests weapons, they just don't cut it. I once cleared a floor 14 monster zoo and i got a serpentine plated boot which only had a +1 damage bonus in comparison to it's mudane part, the zoo wasn't worth the damage i took for that thing.

tl;dr version

- the deeper you the more does your melee build become useless (already knowen, but in RotDG it gets worse)
- normal artefacts and questrewards don't scale enough with deeper level difficulty (same goes for krong anvils)
- almost no item variation in deeper levels (i found about 12 armoured mage robs, 10 runeshields, 7 serpentine plate boots, 14 jingly staffs, 7 boilerplate helm and chestarmours in floor 11-13 .. they were completly useless to me)
- brax doesn't "scale" with it he need a bit more variation in deeper levels.
- i found enough booze in floor 13-14 that i was able to get 1500 turns of mana regen .. food on the other hand was so spare i was seriously happy to find grinded cheese or meat!
- the deeper levels the "realm of the diggle gods" are lacking diggles! really, seriously i only found arch diggles there and only if they spawned as a company.
- lutefish avatars are op with their holy attackspell same goes for diggle plague in general
- no weapon exept evil chest weapons could compare later on, normal weapons or "artefacts" didn't cut it damagewise
- sometimes it feels like even with 45% chance disarm that the game is lying to me. I once needed 7 treid to disarm a 45% trap and another time even 9(!) ... RNG is evil.
- monsters in deeper level have too much counter/critical chance rendering swashbuckling, dodge and normal counter useless due to critical always hitting the target (some monster were able to crit me on every 2nd hit and the lutefish avatar once crited me 6 out of 6 times and it wasn't even remotly funny!)


My (personal) ideas:
- critical hit should NOT break counter or dodge
- rewards form sidequests, monsterzoo, special rooms, uberchests etc... should increase (scale)
- scale krongs anvil power blessing/curses the deeper you go
- more item variation in deeper levels (also for braxs shop)
- mines get to dangerous too fast, they should be a bit spread levelwise soe that in earlier levels you dont have so much high-level mines. (i found a level 6 mine on floor 3)
- more diggles in deeper levels (seriously! we lack Diggles in Realm of the Diggle Gods)
- limit the amount of corruption per item to lets say 4-6 but scale corruption the deeper you go (so a blob of corruption can deal a bigger one than a magic golem. Like weak corruption, medium and strong)
- Add another way of cleaning corrupted items. -> my ideas: alchemy gets a lv 5 potion (hidden) which creats a special potion (only 1 per cycle never more) which can clean one(!) item of one(!) random curruption)
- Let Krongs Anvil have the ability to clean corrupted item based on a % chance.

You get 2 option if you place a corrupted intem on a krong anvil
1) Pray to Krong for a Blessing (like normal) OR 2) Ask Krong for Cleansing (30% chance nothing, 15% chance -3 corruptions, 20% chance -2 corruption, 30% -1 corruption with the strengh of the corruption ebing randomly choosen)


Thats it for know .... perhaps i can think of something new later.

stl;dr
- melee builds need some love


PS: typing errors can be kept as forum artefacts .)

 

Very nice overview, very good ideas. Great post basically Wish I had more experience with the lower floors so I could comment more than this

 

Crafting interface shows a list of KNOWN recipes...

So why the heck can we still not see the name and stats of the result before we make it? Its mind boggling, annoying, and encumbering.

Also, by changing the devices from containers to just items, you make the inventory issues go from being just "bad, but tolerable", to horrible.

Used to be able to get by, through stacking extra crafting components into your containers so you could actually still carry *some* loot. Now... tough titty, you're lucky to get squat. My old necro with alchemy and fungal arts really sucks now. In fact I think he lost all his stored components. Alchemy requires you to carry various implements from other trades for the level 0 combines (and thus crafting bits for those too).

There needs to be a much more elegant solution to crafting. The system is good, but the implementation is poor.

A: If we know the recipe, show us the result before we make it so we're not guessing which item is which and forced to look up recipes to make sure we're using the recipe with the right ingredients on the list. (some of the final results look too similar to be any help)

B: Implementation of a inventory solution to restore at a minimum the space we could utilize before for extra stuff, for base crafting items only (ie, the stuff to make a longsword, but not the longsword itself which could later be used to make a longsword +1). An container that uses an inventory space and opens up another inventory that can only accept those crafting materials would be ideal. It wouldn't even need to be as big as the regular inventory, just as big as the space we lost due to the patch. So a few of the 4 slot containers and 2 slot containers and 1 slot grinders. Whatever that came out to. Somewhere between 12-20 slots, i dont remember off the top of my head.

:KUDOS:

Great that you cant just powerbuild items you dont have the recipes for now (like FS). Great change.

QUESTION:

Are bookcases *slightly* weighted towards you're own craftskills or just completely randomized?

 

+1 for a container that can only hold crafting components. That'd make the game a lot less painful in inventory management.

 

I don't think so, but I think they should be.

Also a quiver that holds your different kinds of bolts. The biggest problem with playing an archer is that it eats a lot of your inventory. In fact, I'd really like to see a quiver that you can drop arrows into that basically gives you a second belt that can only hold bolts. I don't know if that's feasible, but it'd make being an archer without having your inventory window all the time more manageable.

 

I hate it when I check a bookcase and I don't find anything. Given the ever-expanding list of secret recipes, it might be a good idea to remove the chance of finding nothing at a bookshelf.

 

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already (I have read the entire thread but my memory only works when it feels like it). I am wondering exactly what the rationale was behind the "chicken AI" that many monsters now have. It must have been some type of balancing issue, but it seems like it has made the already difficult melee builds almost impossible to play. If I am playing a magic user, the chicken AI doesn't affect me in the least. I can still sit back and spam whatever ranged attack spell I always use and the monsters not rushing me is now a bonus because I don't have to keep backing up to avoid melee beat downs. With a melee character, I have to chase those same monsters down, all the while taking a pummeling from whatever magic or other attack they feel like throwing at me. If this was a balancing issue, why has it been made to make the already hardest builds more difficult to play?

 

Will second the deeper chests of evil not spawning anything but melee staves, clockwork crossbows and royal beatdowns.

Was looking for something for my mage and everything got fed to it belongs in a museum; I was still using the orbs of nothingness I'd picked up on level 8 by the end of the game.